Still here… Always here.

You can’t think that in the thick of a pennant race I’ve given up on the Reds. Quite the contrary, in fact. I’ve been spending all of my time over at redreporter.com. Too much time. I find myself in the same boat as Sister Daedalus – it seems like I have sacrificed my social life for the Reds this season. Seriously, if you’re a Reds fan who has happened to wander into my little blog here, go check out Red Reporter sometime: JD runs a good ship over there. I’m "Ash" ’cause, you know I pride myself on my creativity and the fact that I’m so darn clever. Ok, it was simple, and it’s me.

So, why am I back? Well… Daedalus has prompted me into action. She has written a letter in response to a column in a little nothing Cincinnati paper called City Beat.If Daedalus is indeed a "juvenile blogger," I would be proud to be called the same.

I have yet to come across a Reds blog that has been active for any length of time that is not full of insight or humor, or even both. My own blog isn’t chock full of stats and facts, but rather my opinions, thoughts, rants, and raves, with a helping of actual fact thrown in there to make me seem legit. ****, I am legitimate. I don’t need a million readers or a column in City Beat to legitimize my fandom, and I don’t need either of those things to legitimize my opinion that Jerry Narron is, in general, an absolute M0R0N.

I was going to pick and choose points Mr. Bill "Who?" Peterson (Classic, Daedalus, classic!) made and offer my own opinion, but why bother? I know what I know, I know that Daedalus already ripped him a new one, and I know that I can back up my not-so-glowing opinion of Narron with any number of W T F!? moves from many games throughout the season.

I think the bottom line is that Mr. "Who?" missed the point: He could have taken his column and written a beautiful piece on how excited/thrilled/hopeful the Reds fans are that are out there to see their team making a run for the postseason. Instead, he took shots at those of us who nickname players (ESPN analysts call Dunn the "Big Donkey" for chrissakes!), and those of us who spend our time filling blogs with our "juvenile" thoughts and opinions. Yes, Jerry Narron is the manager of a team that has done much better than expected, but he isn’t responsible for the mostly wonderful year being had by Aaron Harang, the hot start by Bronson Arroyo, etc. I shudder to think where this team might be if Edwin’s bat had been in the lineup as opposed to Royce Clayton’s. The recent overuse of Ryan Franklin is the latest in a long line of managerial blunders courtesy of Mr. Narron, whose Reds might just be winning in spite of his management, instead of because of it.

So, good job, Mr. "Who?" – you’ve made an army of enemies out of people who love the Reds. I do have to feature one of your quotes:

There’s a pretty good chance the Reds are doing better than their critics.

Surely by critics, you don’t mean us. I am sometimes critcal, but never a critic. I am first and foremost a fan. What kind of a fan would I be if I never showed my displeasure with a decision here, a roster move there?

This blog would make for a boring read, no?

As ever, go Redlegs. Hopefully Jerry’ll leave his boy Franklin out of the next couple of games…

5 comments

There’s a link through Daedalus’ website… I was going to put it here, but I’ve been trying to link to the page for a few minutes now, and it keeps timing out. I’ll try again tomorrow, and if it’s working again, I’ll post the link at that time.

He hasn’t responded to my email. I write to Washington Post writers all the time, guys and gals everyone has heard of, and they often respond. But Who, who doesn’t have a sliver of the number of WaPo readers, should have some time to respond, shouldn’t he?

You must understand the larger dynamic of what is going on, to comprehend why the Reds bloggers have been targeted for ridicule by Mr. Who?

What’s happening, is that the mainstream media is losing all credibility at a rapidly deteriorating rate, so much so, that journalists that work for commercial rags are in damage control panic mode. Increasibgly, people are turning to blogs and “underground writers” for unbiased true reporting of what is going on in the world. The mainstream media basically serves as gatekeepers for THE CORPORATIONS, and BIG MONEY INTERESTS. They are supposed to control the flow of information to keep us serfs in line and behaving like docile sheep happy to collect our slave wages and return home to be hypnotized by the idiot box.

So bloggers and that darned internet has become the enemy of the propaganda press, and even if we are only talking about a sports team here, this serves as a discrediting attack on all bloggers… i.e. if Reds bloggers are clueless, then all bloggers must be uninformed critics with no credibility.